Woman in Chinese Dress

Reproduced as plate 7 in Arishima Ikuma's 1932 portrait album Arishima Ikuma Gashū: Jinbutsu Shōzō-hen (Atelier-sha, Tokyo), Woman in Chinese Dress (支那服の女) is a three-quarter-length oil portrait of a young woman in a heavily patterned light qipao-style robe, seated forward with her left hand resting on a vermillion globe — perhaps a Chinese paper lantern or a lacquered ball — that anchors the lower-right corner of the composition. The painter exploits the patterned silk for a virtuoso passage of small, distinct touches of colour, and contrasts the cool pale green and grey of the robe against the burnt-orange curtains and the deep red of the ball. The subject reflects the chinoiserie that runs through much Taishō and early-Shōwa yōga — a fascination with Chinese fabrics and lacquer that supplied Japanese oil painters with the kind of patterned, sumptuous still-life material that French painters had drawn from North African textiles. The painting is one of the central character portraits of the album and shows Arishima's sustained Cézannesque interest in the constructive planes of the face combined with the painter's growing taste for decorative pattern across the surface.